More strange behaviour of Tor 0.2.0.2 Alpha & vidalia 0.0.12

["Stephen" <stephen@xxxxxxxxx>]

Greetings!



Here are my experiences, re: strange behaviour of Tor 0.2.0.2 & vidalia 0.0.12 - see also the end of this mail for comments on Rogers mail posted not so long ago!



I was successfully running a Tor relay node on Win XP Pro SP2 for six days using 0.2.0.2-alpha (r10455) & Vidalia  0.0.12 with my bandwidth configured using Vidalia at:



Average Rate: 36 KB/s



Maximum Rate: 40 KB/s



Everything about the connection was working real good. My bandwidth rate was averaging 38/39 KB/s during this time. 



My dynamic connection maintained the same IP address during these six days. However, when I returned to my machine yesterday morning the connection appeared to have flatlined. It turns out that I could get no connection to the Internet so I re-started my router and re-connected to the net & was assigned a new IP address (nothing unusual there, after all it is a dynamic connection ;) 



What does seem odd, though, is that when I re-started Tor & it performed the bandwidth self-test it registered my upload bandwidth limit at 21 KB/s rather than the settings I'd configured originally using Vidalia. I've checked my Tor Bandwidth Usage this evening & bandwidth has indeed been used (consistent with a bandwidth rate of 22 KB/s).



Is there anything I can do to ensure my original bandwidth settings are used and not this lesser bandwidth rate? I've read the thread entitled "" & I'm wondering if this might be a similiar kind of problem. The only other possibility that I can think of is that my ISP British Telecommunications ( Bt-central-plus) has been limiting bandwidth usuage of late on the Bittorrent network & I'm wondering if they have done the same thing with my connection now that I've been running my Tor relay for just under a week. This might seem a little paranoid but not beyond the realm of possibility. Would it be worthwhile to run a bandwidth test using my current Tor settings & can anyone recommend me a Tor-friendly bandwidth test?





Any other suggestions/advice would be appreciated!



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Well, I've just arrived at my email inbox & I've been reading the latest additions to the "Strange Behaviour" thread & in particular Roger's comments about vidalia. I'd just like to say that after I re-started my router & I was assigned a new IP address & re-started Tor, the Message Log was still listing my previous IP address as being the current IP address. I used the *Get Address* button in the vidalia Server settings and was presented with the prompt: "Vidalia was only able to find a private IP address for your server. Would you like to access an external service to determine your public IP address?" When I chose "Yes" my new public IP Address was displayed in the vidalia Server Settings pane but this new address wasn't acknowledged in the Message Log (I waited 10 minutes or so to see if a message of acknowledgment would appear - when I ran a Tor server on XP Pro briefly at the start of the year the Message Log would acknowledge a change of IP address, can't remember what
  version of Tor/Vidalia I was using at the time). When I repeated the process of using the "Get Address" button I found that I could toggle between the IP address that I'd been using for the previous six days and the newly assigned public IP address that was found when I said "Yes" to the "Would you like to access an external service to determine your public IP address?" When I say that I could toggle between the 2 IP addresses, what I mean is that this was possible just by clicking on the "Get Address" button, each time I did this it produced the old IP address, I repeated the action and it produced the new IP address, I repeated the action it produced the old IP address, ad infinitum! So, I chose the new IP address, re-started Tor & the new IP  address was acknowledged  in the  Message  Log  but still I had the reduced bandwidth rate. Strange indeed!





Regards,



Stephen